Hi, I’m Victoria, and I love melodrama (in fiction) perhaps a tad too much.

Les Miserables is one of my favorite novels, if not THE favorite. If that explains it.

I don’t watch soap operas, but that’s mainly because the melodrama that intrigues me is generally of a different kind than you find in a soap opera. I’ve always loved classical tragedy–I guess it’s the melancholic in me.

A large part of my growth and development as a writer has entailed learning to tap down the melodrama. When there is a lot of pathos involved, I’ve learned to let character emotions and reactions simmer under the surface rather than throw everything out there.

Still, I personally love my first failed novel, titled “Life’s Little Jokes,” although it will never see the light of day. It’s an exercise in pure, unbridled, glorious melodrama. It’s one of those things that is so ridiculously bad that it’s good, in its way. At least, in my opinion it is. Maybe it COULD honestly work as a satire kind of thing.

I had so much fun with that novel in the three years between the dream that gave me the original idea for “The Crimson League: The Fight for Hope” and figuring out who my protagonist was and how to execute that idea.

Some of the plot ideas and character tropes from “Life’s Little Jokes,” toned down a bit and made more realistic, feature in my Herezoth trilogy. So that first melodrama did a lot of heavy lifting for me and taught me so much.

I’m grateful I still have it. I go back and read through it occasionally and partly fall in love, partly laugh, and partly cringe.